Unbeknown to me, ‘work sabbaticals’
are increasingly becoming a thing, whereby skilled employees are given
sanctioned leave to travel and work for somebody else. Or so says Karoli
Hindriks, co-foundr and CEO of Jobbatical.
The Estonian startup operates what it calls a marketplace for
‘short-term jobs with life-changing experiences’, matching those who
wish to take a work a sabbatical with employers seeking
potentially short-term but skilled hires.

Citing the company’s own research, Hindriks says that 74 per cent of
professionals would like to take this type of career break and and that
nearly two thirds are planning to do so.

(In fact, in her original pitch, the Jobbatical CEO tried to convince
me that I had done just that when I left journalism to ‘do a startup’,
only to return a year later after I’d failed to change my the world.)

Specifically, the problem that Jobbatical is aiming to the solve is
that, according to Hindriks, there’s no easy way for employees to find
short term professional gigs focusing on what she calls a “full on-board
experience”. Likewise, for employers, there’s no easy way to find
talent for short term gigs.

“There are employers looking for experienced professionals for short
term hires, and individuals either working as freelancers or just
seeking a working sabbatical to use and develop their skills and
interests. There is a demand and supply for short-term hiring, but no
platform to do the matchmaking,” she says, adding that four out of ten
companies in the UK and close to three out of ten in the U.S. allow
sabbatical breaks for their employees.